“Resurrecting Love”

What is love?

People have been asking this question for a long time.  How do you define love?  I think the best answer that I have ever heard is: “I know it when I feel it.”  I think it is far easier to tell someone what love is not, rather than what love is.  Nevertheless, let us first survey common definitions of love found in traditional models of church.

Often time for our more traditional brothers and sisters, love is centered on correction and rebuke to get you to conform to a normative model.  There is a desire to conform the individual to the community and therefore make the individual like everyone else.  Doctrine and dogmatics become more important than the whole of the individual.  There is a consistent belief that there is a need to strangle eccentrics and suffocate uniqueness.  The individual has consistently been one of the most consistent casualties of traditional religion.  The individual spirit is consistently trampled and stomped upon in the name of love.

I think this type of religion is bullshit.  What has it done to help us?

There is a need to let die the traditional religion, the traditional Jesus.  Their idea of love is an imposter.  The truth is that Jesus is Queer.

I believe we will only find the meaning of love when we are willing to discover the Queer Jesus who is the author of love and the queerness that each one of us carries.

The Queer Jesus is an entity that believes that the glory of God is a human being made fully alive through love.

You can’t be fully alive when you are told your sexuality is sinful.  You can’t be fully alive when you are told your identity is a mental illness.  You can’t be full alive when you are under a constant microscope of oppressive rules.  I have been told that the rules are there to make you a better person.  Does this sound like horseshit anyone else beside me?

I say that if you believe in a God that oppresses people, takes away people’s sexuality, perverts people’s identity, pushes people to the brink of insanity trying to keep up with the rules, and winds up mostly on the side of don’t rather than do then your God is a fucking asshole.

Can I tell you about a God that loves every piece of who you are because she made all those pieces?

Can I tell you about a God that wants you to succeed and thrive just as you are?

Enter the Queer Jesus.  In John 15:13 we are told, “Greater love has no one than this…that they lay down their life for their friend.”  The Queer Jesus demonstrated that love on the cross.  In that moment, we find that love is sacrificial, willing to be wounded, and forgives the persecutor.  This is real love.  How are you demonstrating such love?

In John 20, Jesus meets up with Thomas after the resurrection.  Thomas inquires of Jesus, “How do I know it is you?”  Jesus replies, “Put your fingers where the nails were.”  You see we love by sharing our wounds.

To love you have to know where your wounds are.  You have to know where to tell people to put their hands.  To love you have to sacrifice the time for those around you.  The Queer Jesus came just for Thomas.  We must never forget to go to that one person who needs us.  To love we have to keep our mind on the end game.  What do you want to accomplish in this life?  Do you want to be known for love or for hate?  If you want to be known for love, then do it.  Love is an action.

I hope that our church will follow the example of the Queer Jesus and Thomas.  I pray that we will love sacrificially, exhibit a willingness to be wounded, and a desire to forgive those who persecute us.  I further pray that we will become familiar with our own wounds, give of ourselves to others, and keep our lives centered on love.

Later, Thomas went on to found the church in modern day India.  Christianity in India is quite vibrant, mystical, and loving.

What will we accomplish in this space?

I don’t give a shit about all that traditional stuff.

I want real tangible substantive wounded queer love.

I will no longer cede love to the oppressive assholes that have never felt true love.

Love is Queer.  God is Queer.

May we use this space, Queer people following a Queer Jesus, to teach this community how to love.

God make it so.

Amen.